I attended a useful webinar by James Styring the other week, entitled ‘Easy and motivating ways to use digital technology in the classroom. Click here to watch a recording of the webinar. Overall, it was a very good presentation. There… Read More ›
Lesson Ideas
Spelling races with mini-whiteboards
I don’t do enough spelling practice. I should develop in that area, definitely. But one fun thing I do is a simple whiteboard spelling game as a review. Give each team (about 4 students) a mini whiteboard, pen, eraser. Say… Read More ›
Disappearing dialogues, colour-coded support
On the CELTA YL course I did a story retelling task. The students had watched a Shaun the Sheep video, and I’d pre-taught some of the tough vocab. After the video I wanted them to retell the story, but they… Read More ›
Post-it note votes
A quick post-task for poster work. We’ve been doing quite a bit of post-it note voting recently, students seem to like it. Display posters around the room. In this case, we were designing environmentally friendly parks. Tell students that we will… Read More ›
Comparatives and superlatives – Top Trumps
This is a classic. I find Top Trumps are a fun way to practise comparatives (mainly) and superlatives with young learners. Here’s something I did recently… The topic was ‘Wild World’, but talk of animals like polar bears feels a… Read More ›
Using story cubes
I bought these story cubes a few months ago, and I’ve tried them out a few times this term. They are basically dice with pictures on them, so it’s really up to you how you use them. You can find… Read More ›
Lesson idea: retelling a story in groups
Here’s a great group task for retelling a story. I came across it during the British Council summer school here in Bangkok. My teen group were doing activities based on the movie ‘Jumanji’, but this can work for any movie, fairytale,… Read More ›
Lesson idea: Star Wars crawl creator
I got so excited about this that I had to post it up! I found this site today where you can create your own version of the Star Wars intro! It looks like this, and you can find it here…… Read More ›
Vocabulary review – fortune tellers
Did you ever make one of those origami fortune tellers when you were a kid? They were pretty cool. Anyway, I’ve just planned a lesson on shapes with my young learners (from Incredible English), and thought the classic fortune tellers… Read More ›
Great formative assessment tools
In the first ever guest post on ELT Planning, Kirsten Anne shares her teaching experiences and offers two great ideas for formative assessment. This post has been a long time coming. I’ve been promising to write something for ELT Planning for a… Read More ›
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